As a modern transportation means, elevators take an important role in vertical transport of high-rise buildings. As a branch of special elevators, inclined elevators are applicable at tourist spots, in regions where the residential buildings are built on hillsides owing to limited availability of the urban area, in complex roadways, and applicable to routine maintenance and service of high towers and large bridges. Inclined elevators are applicable to transportation on slopes with varying gradients, break through the layout concept of conventional obliquely running containers. Hence, inclined elevators involve strong creativeness and uniqueness. As people's living standard is improved, inclined elevators for sightseeing and vertical transport in residential buildings have been widely applied at oblique hillside locations and in buildings. Utilizing inclined elevators, visitors can enjoy beautiful scenery, thanks to the advantages of inclined elevators, such as high transport capacity, high transport speed, and long transport range.
Inclined elevators are used more and more widely. However, most existing inclined elevators have a constant gradient, which is a severe constraint in the development of inclined elevators. At present, there are few applications of inclined special elevators that operate along a variable trajectory; in addition, such inclined special elevators essentially have a variable trajectory only in a section of the running path. It is an urgent task to develop an inclined elevator that has a continuous variable trajectory.